The 64-year-old woman, who has not been named, said she met Chukwuebuka Kasi Obiaku, 34, on Facebook, police spokesman Frank Mba said. He invited her to Nigeria under the “pretext of love and marriage”.
The woman, a retired government worker, arrived in Nigeria from Washington, DC, in February 2019, and they were married three months later.
However, the relationship deteriorated shortly after the wedding, and Obiaku held her captive at a Lagos hotel for more than a year, Mba told CNN.
Obiaku used the woman’s identity to extort his associates and defraud international companies.
He forced her to “use her American accent to ask her associates and organizations for money. She made her take on various characters and, in a particular case, told her to act as a babysitter on the phone to defraud some people,” Mba told CNN. .
He also took over his credit cards and collected his retirement payments for 15 months, according to a statement.
CNN has been unable to contact Obiaku, who is still detained by police, to determine if he has an attorney.
Mba said police are still investigating the allegations against Obiaku and that they may press charges for cybercrime against him.
Social media warning
Mba said the suspect admitted to police that the Lagos wedding was a ruse to gain her trust and then extort it.
The woman was finally rescued after police received a notice about the case from another Nigerian.
Police said the arrest came after a similar case in which they rescued a 40-year-old Filipino woman detained by her lover, whom she also met on Facebook.
He had held her for six months and prevented her from returning to the Philippines, according to police.
The man lured the Filipino citizen to Nigeria with the intention of “confining, sexually abusing and extorting it,” Mba said in the statement, warning people to be more cautious when interacting with those they have only met on social media.
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